Summer Intermission
by SpontaneousWhimsicality
Summary: Explanatory fic between seasons 2 and 3 involving Stiles and Stiles-like shenanigans. Can also be found on AO3 under the author Lucania.


It was surprising how long it took the Sheriff to walk into the living room, but when he did, Stiles was almost finished with his Game of Thrones marathon and screaming in dismay, "Frey, dude, dick move". There was something to be said about Stiles staring unflinchingly at the telelvision screen as nearly the entire house of Stark was decimated. Werewolves, man, they just completely changed what he saw as "normal".

Frowning in confusion with a look Stiles recognized all too well, Sheriff Stilinski asked, "You've been here all morning, shouldn't you be at Scott's house or something?"

"What, I can't spend time with my dad and the couch?" the teen asked without looking from the screen. No offense to his dad or anything, but Catelyn's neck was just slit and, come on, really?

"Stiles, I've been at work since five."

"Oh." He braved the moment to look at his father's face and winced before adding, " Well, just the couch then."

The Sheriff sighed and shuffled towards the kitchen, calling behind him, "This isn't going to be a habit, I don't want you sitting around all summer."

"And I don't want you eating any more greasy foods, but we both can't have exactly what we want now, can we?" he yelled, stuffing his face with the conveniently placed chips that his father definitely could not have.

"You seemed to have plenty of things to do during school last semester, I just don't want you lazing around for two months."

Stiles muted the TV as it went to commercial and leaned over the back of the couch to say, "Do I have to remind you that those 'plenty of things to do' included stealing a vehicle, kidnapping a peer and getting a restraining order placed against me?"

"Which you did with Scott," his father pointed out. "Seriously. Where is your partner in crime?"

Stiles turned back to the TV distractedly and said, "I'm just giving him some space."

As far as Stiles could tell, Scott was going through a 're-evaluation period' fueled by the guilt of what had happened with Matt, his failed relationship with Allison, and his mother discovering he's a nocturnal monster who turned into a bloodthirsty werewolf once a month. In all honesty, though, he and Scott had only talked on the phone briefly since school had let out three days earlier. Plus, Stiles needed some space to lick his own wounds (pun intended) what with Jackson and Lydia getting back together. Not like he really had a chance with the strawberry-blonde goddess of his dreams but hey, he had some hopes there. Either way, Stiles decided that what he and his best buddy needed was a little time to themselves, and away from all evil murderous slave creatures and hunters, dead and undead alike.

"Well can you 'give him some space' without sitting on the couch all day?"

"_Dad_," Stiles sighed. "_Catelyn and Robb Stark and everyone are dead do you not see the importance in what I'm doing here."_

"Well what about one of your other friends?" the Sheriff asked. "You're friends with that Danny guy, right?"

"Yeah..." Stiles said slowly, reaching for another handful of barbeque potato chips, or what he liked to call, the couch potato's fuel from the Gods. The meaningful look from his father sent him reaching for his phone with a dramatic show of fake difficulty. "You know, I can - Call him now, I guess."

Sheriff Stilinski nodded with a pressed smile as Stiles scrolled through his contacts quickly and pressed the Call button by Danny's name, all the while maintaining perfect eye contact.

"Hey, Danny!" Stiles exclaimed, sending crumbs of BBQ goodness all over the couch the moment the call went through.

"...Stiles?" the receiver of the call guessed. The withering look his father shot him sent Stiles into a frenzied panic of a controlled babble. Because, yeah, Stiles talked a lot, but he knew what he was doing. There were rules to the insanity that was the fleshy boney mass of Stiles Stilinski. Just because it was chaotic and hyper to other people didn't mean it was to him.

"So I was wondering what my good friend Danny was doing today and I thought to myself, 'Why don't you call him?" and lo and behold here I am. We are."

The eyebrow raise and subsequent head nodding from his father was not helping Stiles form words correctly that would appeal to someone he only knew vaguely.

"Well, I'm actually heading out in a minute," Danny said over the phone, voice coming out slowly and with hesitation.

"Hey, that sounds great, I'll drive!"

"What?"

The Sheriff was under the assumption that Stiles and Scott were good enough friends with Danny to be able to take him out for willy nilly 'you got dumped, let's party' outings. And Stiles wasn't about to let that assumption be replaced with lots of questions like, "Stiles, why were you really at a nightclub where over three people were attacked?" Because he loved his dad. A lot. And if his dad found out that Matt actually killed people with a lizard-faced supernatural creature called a Kanima, or the supernatural in general, it wouldn't be too great for his health. Or Stiles.

He craned his head around the sofa to watch his father disappear down the hall as he exclaimed, "Yeah, I'll come pick you up and then we can go...go..."

From somewhere else in the house came the groaning sound of a door closing, and Stiles sat up straight from his previously relaxed position to quickly whisper, "Where are we going and when can I pick you up so that my dad doesn't kick me out of the house?"

Danny sighed from the other end of the phone and reluctantly stated, "We're going to The Jungle and you're going to pick me up at nine, because I'm a good friend who saves his not-so-good friend from his sheriff father."

"Oh God, thank you so much Danny."

"And Stiles."

He paused in his relishing at getting out of the house as he blinked in surprise and replied, "Yeah?"

"Try to dress for the occasion."

Stiles pulled his jeep up to Danny's house promptly at 8:59pm and honked the car horn confidently, legs shaking a wear pattern through his already roughed up interior. He definitely didn't know what 'dress for the occasion' meant - especially when he always looked super hot in everything he wore - but he got the feeling that the look he was getting from Danny's nearly perfectly chiseled face was not up to par.

"What?" Stiles protested, curling his lip into a nearly perfect mirror image of Danny's grimace.

"When I said 'dress for the occasion', I meant, 'don't wear what you usually wear to school'."

"Dude, everything I own is what I usually wear to school." Seriously, what was up with gay guys (and girls like the very attractive Lydia Martin) just separating their clothes into 'for school' and 'not for school'. First of all, how did their wallets even afford that kind of variety, and how did someone put in that much effort into what they wore?

"Fine, just.." Danny groaned as he climbed into the car, "Don't embarrass me."

"No problem, dude," Stiles told him reassuringly, switching the car into reverse. "No embarrassment here." Setting the car into drive, he yelled, "To the Jungle!" and completely ignored the groan of dismay that came from his passenger.

The moment they were surrounded by flashing lights and gyrating bodies, Danny made a beeline for the bar, seemingly anxious to ditch Stiles as soon as possible. Which, okay, he wasn't the greatest wingman in the world, but Danny could've at least have given him a chance. Scott had managed to nab Allison on his own but that didn't mean that Stiles wasn't given the opportunity to try and hook his best-friend up on the rare occasion they went to parties. Stiles walked after him quickly, ducking in between bodies and already forming a speech in his head.

"Hey, Stiles?"

"Stiles!"

"Stilinski, that you?"

Stiles whipped his head at an alarming rate at the very loud calls to his name in the already deafening club. His face broke out into an unwavering grin at the sight of one-inch pumps and dramatically styled wigs as he cried out, "Hey, it's my favorite party-crashers!" Momentarily distracted, he eagerly followed the three familiar faces as they corralled him towards the bar, fumbling and cursing coordination when one of his new acquaintances handed him what appeared to be a green martini.

"Stiles?"

In any other situation he would have been able to control himself calmly and professionally, but when surrounded by Jordan, Riley, and Bailey in a gay-club as an under-aged high-schooler questioning his own sexual orientation, Stiles squeaked out an, "Oh shit." before turning around to face a very confused Danny.

"Hey...Danny...You, uh, haven't met my friends yet, have you. Oh God, have you? 'Cuz that would seriously be not cool, I'm trying to keep my friend groups very much separate and you guys knowing each other and knowing me is totally not one of the things that Stiles wants to deal with right now." Stiles froze at the now blank-faced Danny and practically shoved the drink into his hands, "I'm the designated driver tonight, so, yeah, go do. Whatever you do here. Or, hey, whomever."

Danny looked at the three looming figures surrounding Stiles and began to drink the cocktail in his hands, eyes pinning Stiles with an expression that left him squirming uncomfortably towards his three slightly more supportive compadres. Between the flashing colored lights and the reverberating bass of the club, Stiles saw something cross Danny's face as he asked, "Is this where you got those chains from?"

Mind drawing a blank, Stiles looked from Bailey's permanently arched eyebrows to Danny's expectant face and stuttered, "Yes...?"

Clearly that wasn't the right answer, because Danny's face fell into an expression of intense disbelief. Stiles desperately tried to remember a scene that involved him and Danny and chains, but nothing came to mind. Well, nothing real anyway. It must have been a werewolf thing, because his life got a lot more interesting - and deadly - after werewolves were involved, but for the life of him Stiles couldn't remember what _it_ was.

"Stiles I never...pegged you as that kind of guy, but you don't really fit into stereotypes, do you."

"Uh..." Still confused, Stiles glanced back at the trio for some sort of help, but they seemed happy enough to just watch the conversation unfold. "Wait, chains - Do you think - What was I using chains for again?"

"I think," a voice from his side interrupted, "That you need a drink."

Stiles flailed at the small glass of alcohol being shoved into his face by Riley before grabbing it and passing it over to Danny before sighing with exasperation, "Designated driver." Danny accepted the drink without hesitation and knocked it back like a shot. And Stiles wasn't really in the know-how about alcohol, but he was pretty sure you weren't supposed to drink anything in a tumbler glass like a shot.

"So I told him," Jordan narrated animatedly, sitting next to Stiles at the bar, "if he's been waiting around for my number all day for three days straight, that means he doesn't have a job! And I don't need a man who doesn't have a job."

"Yeah, definitely," Stiles nodded, looking around and wondering if maybe he should get a job where he'd see Lydia during the summer. The thoughts were automatic: Lydia was very clearly into Jackson. Stiles, stop thinking about Lydia. Internal dialogue aside, it was minutes ago that he last saw Danny somewhere between guy-with-very-large-tribal-tattoo-that-disappeared -underneath-his-pants and very-attractive-long-haired-dude-with-a-farmer's-t an-and-leather-chaps, but now couldn't see him anymore.

"Where's your friend with the uneven jaw?"

It took Stiles only half a second to realize who Jordan was referring to, and he felt a surge of pride that he wasn't the only one who noticed that. "Oh, Scott. He's - Well, some stuff happened recently and I figured he'd want some time to himself to, you know, figure himself out." Jordan nodded in understanding, her straight hair bouncing into her face briefly. "Hey, Jordan, have you seen that guy around, the one I was with earlier?"

"No, I don't think so," Jordan answered, squinting narrowly at the crowd. "You lost him?"

"That depends on what your definition of what 'lost' means," Stiles told her, standing up on the tips of his frayed converse. He was definitely getting nowhere what with the sweating bodies and flashing lights and flying ribbons in the air.

"Alright, go look for him, hon," Jordan told him sympathetically, grabbing another drink from the bar. Seriously, how many beverages did that make? In her usual way, she bent down and whispered into his ear, "Let me know if you find anyone else out here that I can share a drink with," and disappeared behind a more sheltered corner of grunting sweaty walls of flesh.

Stiles pushed through the bodies like a fish against a current and felt distinctly aware of the similarities of the first time he walked into The Jungle. Luckily there wasn't the threat of a lizard-faced, murderer-killing Jackson climbing all over the ceiling but hey. Parallels. He would get an A+ in English. Danny wasn't at the bar, he wasn't at any of the smaller tables, he wasn't near the gogo-dancers, the weird ribbon-dancers or the pole dancers, and he certainly wasn't in the bathrooms. That left the dance floor, which was packed beyond belief. Beacon Hills was a small town and all, but some of the people on the floor looked like they drove miles to get to somewhere they could dance under flashing lights. So yeah, regular dancers, import dancers, and everything in between. Stiles knew there was no way he'd find Danny in _that_.

At the sudden threat of being blinded, Stiles covered his eyes with his sleeve and blinked against the moving spotlight on the wall, mind freezing into only one single thought.

"He's going to kill me," he muttered as he made his way to the oscillating machine, arms flailing as he dove in between different hips and shoulders as if he were swimming in the undulating frenzy of the club's patrons. "Hopefully he won't remember to kill me..." he added before narrowly avoiding a dark haired Greek-built God's elbow to his face. As he passed by the bar, he quickly leaned over the counter to grab the sharpie off of Nick's shirt collar and yelled, "I'll give it back," before continuing on his course to the spotlight.

After slowly and deliberately directing the spotlight across the club for about five minutes, Stiles nearly cried in relief when he saw Danny stumble out from nowhere, clearly very, very, intoxicated.

"Commissioner," he slurred, drawing out the R as he pointed to the spotlight with his name written on it.

Danny was a closet comic-book fan. Who knew. Well, Stiles wouldn't be forgetting that anytime soon, especially next time he needed a favor. Maybe along the lines of, "How do I make myself attractive to straight girls?" or, "Can I borrow your Armani cologne?" Because he did the math, and Stiles is _still _the only one not having a good time. Not even once.

With his eyes never leaving Danny's face, Stiles quickly rubbed the sharpie off of the impromptu Danny signal and sighed "Come on Batman, it's time to go home."

The journey from the spotlight to the front-door was not fun, just like how handing the sharpie back to an angry Nick was not fun and the whole 'getting yelled at for defacing club property' - which, okay rude, he wiped it off and couldn't even tell there used to be sharpie on it in the first place - was not fun. As he dragged Danny through the dark parking lot to his car, Stiles mumbled angrily, "Who gave you drinks, seriously. Was it Nick? Because Nick is supposed to be a good bartender and not give people who he knows is underaged drinks. Especially people who already drank around 12 ounces of nearly pure alcohol to begin with."

From where his face was jammed against his chest, Stiles could barely make out Danny's incoherent words of, "Tasted great." as he wrestled the teen into the passenger seat.

"Alright, sure." Stiles buckled him in quickly and jogged around to the other side of the car before quickly starting it and sighing, "This is going to be one of those nights where you wake up the next morning and ask yourself, 'What happened?', kind of like in the Hangover, except we didn't have a camcorder or a baby or a tiger."

"Bet you have a camcorder." Danny shifted in his seat slightly to sit up straighter, but he was still obviously very drunk from the look on his face.

"I'm sorry, what?" Stiles asked wearily as he pulled the car out into the street. He didn't think Danny had a point he was getting to, more that this was just the beginning of some long-winded ramble that wasn't related to itself.

"I bet you have a camcorder," Danny clarified. "With Miguel," he slurred, drawing out the long syllable of the name before grinning sleepily at Stiles.

"Danny, what-"

"_Miguel_, Stiles," he nearly yelled before fumbling with the seat-belt. "You and Miguel and those chains." Stiles was looking into what he could only describe as a very smug look on Danny's face as his mind slowly worked out everything that was happening.

"Danny. You are drunk. And you don't know what you're saying."

"Come on Stiles, why else would you hide chains in your locker, or ask me if I find you attractive, or go to The Jungle with me or be friends with _those three._"

"...Because I'm open-minded?" he responded, unable to hide the hesitation he felt or the unease that prickled beneath his skin as the car slid to a halt at a red-light.

Danny pinned a look on him that was uncomfortably too competent for someone who had nearly inhaled the entire vodka section of the bar.

"If you ever feel like telling me, I'll be here."

Danny lifted his very defined butt off the faded seat and struggled against the seatbelt before snuggling down with a satisfied sigh.

The rest of the car-ride was in a heaven-blessed silence, with Danny occasionally mumbling incoherently or giggling to himself. At least, Stiles told himself a little sourly, he had managed to get out of the house and out of his dad's hair. Albeit quickly greying hair, but now he was just getting a bit side-tracked.

As he climbed out of his jeep, stolen keys from Danny in hand, he stopped to look up at Danny's house and cursed silently under his breath. How was he supposed to get a very drunk Danny from the passenger-side seat in his jeep to the bedroom in Danny's very quiet suburban house?

With a groan and the feeling that someone had shoved a pencil into his brain, Danny woke with a reluctant start at the burning sunlight that mocked his very being. He ran over the events of the last night in his head. Stiles, The Jungle, trannies and chains, and drinks. Definitely too many drinks. Stiles must have brought him home, Danny realized as he rolled over and his gaze settled on his bedroom floor. Laid out in a neat row were his house keys, phone, wallet, fake ID - thank the Lord - and -

Were those...?

"Pills?" he croaked, bleary eyes blinking against the brightness. Yes, a bottle of pills for his inevitable headache. With a groan that sent the aches magnified by tenfold down his body, he rolled himself off his bed and grabbed the white bottle as he slowly sunk to the ground, blindly tugging against the child-safety lock before swallowing two pills down dry. Then he looked down and became aware of what he was wearing. "When the hell - " Instead of the tight-fitting pants and loose fitting tank-top that he usually wore when he went out, a matching set of sweats was hanging loosely on his body, completely clean and devoid of anything vaguely club-like. Or, post club-like. With that sudden thought jarring his addled mind awake, Danny raced across his room and threw the door to his bathroom open, only to be met with a sight that he had never seen before after particularly bad nights.

Pristine white tiles seemed to sparkle underneath the sunlight, and the entire room smelled of air-freshener and not vomit.

In a daze, he set his pills down before stumbling back and collapsing into his bed, hands clawing for his phone as he unlocked it and flipped through the contacts.

_To Stiles Stilinski [Today, 11:06AM]:_

_dude what happened last night?_

After hitting send and seeing that, to his dismay, it was only 11 am in the morning, Danny curled up onto himself and groaned before his phone pinged.

_From Stiles Stilinski [Today, 11:10 AM]:_

_THAT'S NOT WHAT I USED THE CHAINS FOR JEEZ DANNY_

He didn't understand. But with Stiles, maybe there wasn't a lot _to_ understand.


End file.
